“Good-day, your Grace! Your gun is finished. If you send the money, I’ll send you the gun. If you don’t send the money, you won’t get the gun. God be with you!”
His Grace, far from resenting this language, sent the money.
The Living and Not the Dead
Emperor Joseph II of Austria, was once asked by an ecclesiastic of noble birth, for permission to go to Rome, to visit the graves of the Apostles Peter and Paul. The Emperor made this very appropriate answer:
“It would be more agreeable to me, if, instead of making a pilgrimage to dead bones, you would visit more in your parish. I am sure the Apostle Princes would be more pleased with that, too.”
Good Advice
On one occasion Emperor Joseph II returned the poems of a very indifferent poetess whose name was Kemeter, with this marginal note: “My dear Kemeter, you had better make hemeter” (shirts).
The Unusual Postilion
Emperor Joseph II traveled under the name of Count von Falkenburg. Once, when passing through Stuttgart, the Duke of Würtemberg offered to him the use of the castle, but the Emperor declined, saying he would rather go quietly to a hotel. Then the Duke ordered all hotelkeepers of Stuttgart to take down their signs and had an immense one put over the castlegate which bore these words: “Hotel Emperor Joseph II.”